It is an image that Jefferson Hawkins helped to craft in his 35 years as a top marketing executive for the Church of Scientology. Yet behind that façade is a hidden world of physical and mental abuse, sleep deprivation, labor camps, family disconnection and human rights abuses. It is a nightmare world that is carefully hidden from public view. Counterfeit Dreams is a must-read for anyone who wants to know the truth about today’s most controversial cult.

    These were some of the labels given to three of the most notorious figures of 20th century spirituality: Osho (formerly known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh), G.I. Gurdjieff, and Aleister Crowley. Beneath the controversies and scandals that swirled around all three the author argues that these men, egocentric tendencies notwithstanding, were brilliant thinkers and extraordinary masters of their craft, that of the science of inner transformation, and in particular the art of balancing the so called Left and Right Hand spiritual paths. These men were not humble sages. They were bona fide crazy wisdom masters and consistently went where angels fear to tread. They did not teach with the faint praise of new age fluff or the stuffy platitudes of religious sermons, but rather with a flaming sword, and were a genuine menace to all seekers who fear to face the abyss of their own egos.

    The author of Escape, which detailed her escape along with her eight children from the cult she had been raised in, the extremist Mormon sect the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, follows up on the 2008 raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch, which her ex-husband ran for Warren Jeffs on a sprawling 1,700-acre ranch near Eldorado, Texas.

    The book provides hope and inspiration for the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of such torture. For counselors and other psychology professionals, her journey offers techniques and approaches that should benefit other survivors. And for the general public, the story sheds light on the subjects of ritual abuse, as well as how the mind stores and can recover traumatic memories. Wholeness also demonstrates the undeniable power of repressed memory and disassociation. As a psychology doctoral student, Suzie Burke (pen name) studied how the mind can repress and wall off traumatic events for defensive purposes. The ability of the mind to hide traumatic memories deep within our unconscious mind in disassociated parts of ourselves is well documented with those who have survived early-age sexual abuse, torture and many other instances of severe psychological trauma. In her first-hand experience, Dr. Burke tells how the reality of her own childhood was hidden in her unconscious until events nearly three decades later provided triggers that could not be ignored. Her journey to wholeness was filled with incidents of re-living events which included body memories of physiological shock, choking and vomiting. The account goes beyond the psychological elements of her recovery. It is also a spiritual journey to wholeness in which she discovers that she is indeed a loving, compassionate woman.

    Provocative. Honest. For "Unveiled," reporter Cheryl Reed interviewed more than 300 nuns of diverse beliefs, lifestyles, and orders. She lived and prayed with them, witnessed their vows, mourned and celebrated with them, and asked questions no one had ever dared before: about love and sex, life and death, faith and joy, and loss and regret. In the process, Reed would discover more about motherhood, relationships, faith, and feminism than she ever gleaned from the outside world.